2021 IL App (4th) 190458-U NOTICE FILED 

This Order was filed under 

NO. 4 January 11, 2021 -19-0458 Supreme Court Rule 23 and is Carla Bender 

not precedent except in the 4th District Appellate IN THE APPELLATE COURT limited circumstances allowed Court, IL 

under Rule 23(e)(1). OF ILLINOIS 

FOURTH DISTRICT 

THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, ) Appeal from the 

Plaintiff-Appellee, ) Circuit Court of 

v. ) Champaign County 

JOHN K. WILLIAMSON, ) No. 12CF612 

Defendant-Appellant. ) 

) Honorable 

) Thomas J. Difanis, 

) Judge Presiding. 

JUSTICE CAVANAGH delivered the judgment of the court. 

Justices DeArmond and Harris concurred in the judgment. 

ORDER

¶ 1 Held: Because defendant failed to demonstrate either “cause” or “prejudice” within the 

meaning of section 122-1(f) of the Post-Conviction Hearing Act (Act) (725 ILCS 

5/122-1(f) (West 2018)), the circuit court was correct to deny his motion to file a 

successive postconviction petition. 

¶ 2 Defendant, John K. Williamson, is serving a term of 30 years’ imprisonment for 

armed robbery (720 ILCS 5/18-2(a)(2) (West 2012)). On direct appeal, we affirmed the conviction. 

People v. Williamson, 2015 IL App (4th) 130640-U, ¶ 112. Subsequently, we affirmed the 

summary dismissal of defendant’s initial postconviction petition, which he filed on December 30, 

2015. People v. Williamson, 2018 IL App (4th) 160114-U, ¶ 57. 

¶ 3 On June 6, 2019, defendant moved for leave to file a successive postconviction 

petition. See 725 ILCS 5/122-1(f) (West 2018). He claimed that, under the Supreme Court’s recent 

decision in Carpenter v. United States, 585 U.S. _____, 138 S. Ct. 2206 (2018), the police should 
 

 

 

 

have obtained a warrant before persuading the phone company to hand over his cell-phone records. 

Defendant argued that, because Carpenter did not exist yet when he filed his initial postconviction 

petition, he had cause for failing to raise this fourth-amendment violation at that time. See U.S. 

Const., amend. IV. He further argued that he suffered prejudice in the jury trial in that the cell-site 

location information was damaging evidence against him. 

¶ 4 On the ground of a lack of prejudice, the circuit court of Champaign County denied 

leave to file a successive postconviction petition. Defendant appeals. We affirm the judgment 

because we find no “cause” and no “prejudice” within the meaning of section 122-1(f) of the Act 

(725 ILCS 5/122-1(f) (West 2018)). 

¶ 5 I. BACKGROUND 

¶ 6 From the evening of April 11, 2012, into the early morning of April 12, 2012, Sean 

Harrington had a winning streak at Par-A-Dice Casino in East Peoria, Illinois. He took his 

winnings home, to his apartment in Champaign, Illinois, where, at 5:56 a.m. on April 12, 2012, he 

was robbed at gunpoint. The robber, it is undisputed, was Marvino Mister. 

¶ 7 Surveillance footage from the casino showed defendant and Marvino repeatedly 

passing by the craps table at which Harrington was seated. The video also showed defendant and 

Mister getting into a Pontiac Bonneville and leaving the casino parking lot at the same time as 

Harrington, at 4:32 a.m. on April 12, 2012, and following Harrington’s vehicle as he headed back 

to Champaign. 

¶ 8 Defendant’s cell phone records showed that, at 5:48 a.m., 6:06 a.m., and 6:15 p.m. 

on April 12, 2012, calls were made, on his phone, from the immediate vicinity of Champaign. 

These calls were to a phone number belonging to Leavall Allen, a convicted felon. Allen testified 

that defendant called to ask for directions out of Champaign. 

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¶ 9 Before requesting this cell-site location information from the phone company, the 

police obtained a judicial order finding that such information would be relevant to the investigation 

of the armed robbery. The police, however, never obtained an actual search warrant premised on 

probable cause. 

¶ 10 II. ANALYSIS 

¶ 11 A. Cause 

¶ 12 We decide de novo whether leave to file a successive postconviction petition should 

have been granted. People v. Diggins, 2015 IL App (3d) 130315, ¶ 7. Such leave “may be granted 

only if a petitioner demonstrates cause for his or her failure to bring the claim in his or her initial 

post-conviction proceedings and [that] prejudice results from that failure.” 725 ILCS 5/122-1(f) 

(West 2018). A petitioner “shows cause by identifying an objective factor that impeded his or her 

ability to raise a specific claim during his or her initial post-conviction proceedings.” Id. 

¶ 13 The claim, in this context, is that obtaining defendant’s cell phone records without 

a warrant violated the fourth amendment. According to defendant, the cause of his omitting that 

claim in the initial postconviction proceeding was the nonexistence of Carpenter in December 

2016, when he filed his initial postconviction petition. Carpenter was not issued until 2018. Hence, 

Carpenter was unavailable for defendant to cite as authority before then. 

¶ 14 The supreme court has held, however: “[T]he lack of precedent for a position differs 

from ‘cause’ for failing to raise an issue, and a defendant must raise the issue, even when the law 

is against him, in order to preserve it for review.” People v. Guerrero, 2012 IL 112020, ¶ 20. 

Defendant contends that the lack of Carpenter is cause for his failure to raise the 

fourth-amendment issue earlier. That contention is flatly inconsistent with the quoted holding in 

Guerrero. Defendant was expected to raise the fourth-amendment issue in the original 

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postconviction proceeding even if his chances of success at that time were slim. The supreme court 

in Guerrero cited People v. Johnson, 392 Ill. App. 3d 897 (2009), for the following proposition: 

“the mere possibility that [the] defendant’s claim would have been unsuccessful does not equate 

to an objective factor external to the defense which precluded him from raising [the claim] in his 

initial postconviction petition.” Guerrero, 2012 IL 112020, ¶ 20. In accordance with Guerrero, 

then, we agree with the State that defendant has failed to “demonstrate[ ] cause for his *** failure 

to bring the claim in his *** initial post-conviction proceedings.” 725 ILCS 5/122-1(f) (West 

2018). 

¶ 15 B. Prejudice 

¶ 16 In addition to demonstrating cause, defendant must “demonstrate[ ] *** prejudice 

result[ing] from [his excusable] failure” to “bring the claim in his *** initial post-conviction 

proceedings.” Id. “[A] prisoner shows prejudice by demonstrating that the claim not raised during 

his *** initial post-conviction proceedings so infected the trial that the resulting conviction or 

sentence violated due process.” Id. 

¶ 17 For two reasons, the State contends that defendant has failed to demonstrate 

“prejudice” within the meaning of section 122-1(f). First, under the criteria in People v. De La 

Paz, 204 Ill. 2d 426, 433 (2003), Carpenter does not apply retroactively to cases on collateral 

review. Second, because the police relied upon a court order to obtain the cell phone records, the 

good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule would have permitted the admission of the records 

notwithstanding what is only now clearly recognizable as a violation of the fourth amendment. See 

People v. LeFlore, 2015 IL 116799, ¶ 24. 

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¶ 18 Logically, we first should consider the question of retroactivity because the 

good-faith exception would presuppose the applicability of Carpenter. A new rule applies 

retroactively to cases on collateral review if the new rule does either of the following: 

“(1) places certain kinds of primary, private individual conduct beyond the power 

of the criminal[-]law[-]making authority to proscribe, or (2) requires the 

observance of those procedures that are implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.” 

(Internal quotation marks omitted.) De La Paz, 204 Ill. 2d at 434. 

Carpenter did not do the first thing. It “did not ‘decriminalize’ [citations] any conduct.” Id. Nor 

did Carpenter do the second thing. The new “procedures” must be “central to an accurate 

determination of innocence or guilt” such that, without the procedures, “the likelihood of an 

accurate conviction” would be “seriously diminished.” (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Id. 

Carpenter has nothing to do with ensuring the accurate determination of innocence or guilt. If 

anything, the exclusion of relevant incriminating evidence on fourth-amendment grounds would 

tend to make a determination of innocence less accurate. 

¶ 19 Instead of trying to fit Carpenter into (1) or (2), defendant challenges the relevance 

of the test in De La Paz. He disputes that Carpenter created a “new rule.” Id. “Carpenter did not 

establish a new rule,” he maintains. Rather, Carpenter “applied established precedent to a new 

phenomenon: ‘the ability to chronicle a person’s past movements through the record of his cell 

phone signals’ ” (quoting Carpenter, 585 U.S. at _____, 138 S. Ct. at 2216). 

¶ 20 “The explicit overruling of an earlier holding no doubt creates a new rule; it is more 

difficult, however, to determine whether [the Supreme Court] announce[s] a new rule when a 

decision extends the reasoning of [the Supreme Court’s] prior cases” (Saffle v. Parks, 494 U.S. 

484, 488 (1990))—as Carpenter did. When a case extends the reasoning of prior cases (as most 

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cases do, since they cite authorities), the case announces a new rule if, in a “reasonable, good-faith 

interpretation[ ] of existing precedents,” a court could have reached the opposite conclusion. 

(Internal quotation marks omitted.) Id. If, on the other hand, in a “reasonable, good-faith 

interpretation[ ] of existing precedents,” a court would have “felt compelled” to arrive at the same 

conclusion, the case does not announce a new rule. (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Id. 

¶ 21 That the decision in Carpenter was five to four is a pretty good indication that 

Carpenter announced a new rule. Before Carpenter, it was far from clear that the third-party 

doctrine would be inapplicable to cell-site location information. Under the third-party doctrine, “a 

person ha[d] no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he [or she] voluntarily turn[ed] 

over to third parties.” (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Carpenter, 585 U.S. at _____, 138 S. Ct. 

at 2216. This was true “even if the information [was] revealed [to the third party] on the assumption 

that it [would] be used only for a limited purpose.” (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Id. After 

turning on their cell phones, people “continuously reveal[ed] [their] location to [their] wireless 

carrier.” Id. The question in Carpenter was whether that fact “implicate[d] the third-party 

principle.” Id. The majority in Carpenter held: “Given the unique nature of cell phone location 

records, the fact that the information is held by a third party does not by itself overcome the user’s 

claim to Fourth Amendment protection.” Carpenter, 585 U.S. at _____, 138 S. Ct. at 2217. Justices 

Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito disagreed with that holding. In their view, the cell-site location 

information came squarely within the third-party doctrine. Carpenter, 585 U.S. at _____, 138 S. 

Ct. at 2235 (Kennedy, J., dissenting, joined by Thomas and Alito, JJ.). In his dissent, Justice 

Gorsuch “[could not] fault the Sixth Circuit for holding that [the third-party doctrine] 

extinguish[ed] any *** Fourth Amendment interest in third party cell-site data”: “[t]hat [was] the 

plain effect of [the] categorical holdings” in previous case law. Carpenter, 585 U.S. at _____, 138 

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S. Ct. at 2272 (Gorsuch, J., dissenting). (But Justice Gorsuch would have held that the defendant 

in Carpenter had procedurally forfeited a stronger fourth-amendment argument that would have 

invoked property law or would have drawn analogies to common law. See id.) We conclude, then, 

that Carpenter announced a “new rule” within the meaning of Saffle and that, under the test in 

De La Paz, the new rule does not apply retroactively to cases on collateral review. Thus, defendant 

has failed to demonstrate prejudice. Having arrived at those conclusions, we need not consider the 

good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule. 

¶ 22 III. CONCLUSION 

¶ 23 On the grounds of defendant’s failure to show “cause” and “prejudice” within the 

meaning of section 122-1(f) of the Act (725 ILCS 5/122-1(f) (West 2018)), we affirm the circuit 

court’s judgment. 

¶ 24 Affirmed. 

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